News of him came to us through battered letters littered
with fuzzy postmarks from North-East Africa.
They boasted every type of adventure
under the African sun—run-ins with snakes and other wild things,
kingdoms to conquer, armies to trick,
locals who were no more
man than beast. Ic þe write ond cyþe, he wrote,
I write and describe them to you.
To Aristotle, he wrote
about his defeat of Darius. He did not mention our wedding,
or his second or his third.
He was busy
with his emeralds, his infantries,
his four hundred elephants
armed with archers.
Toby Buckley is a trans writer from Ireland, currently based in Govanhill, Glasgow. He completed his MA in poetry at Queen’s University Belfast, and has been published in The Tangerine, Poetry Ireland Review and The Stinging Fly, as well as a number of different independent zines. He currently works as a freelance writer and runs a tiny zine called Bombinate.
Appears In
Cagibi Issue 6
